"Katarzyna Plejnis tries hard not to think of the missile launchers, tanks and thousands of Russian soldiers stationed just a few miles from her house in northern Poland. That is until the live fire exercises wake her up in the dead of night."

“You can hear the shooting at four in the morning,” says Ms Plejnis, who lives in Braniewo, a small town a few miles from the border with Kaliningrad, the heavily militarised Russian enclave squeezed between Poland and the Baltic states. “When you know that your friends are out there in the field, it makes you think that the threat is real."